Your Highest and Only
by 0torno
Summary: Dr. Nemesis breaks. (Warning for likely unpopular headcanons and mature themes)


Sometimes I can't stay in my room all night. I just can't. The clicking and calculating and unconscious genius of my mind's idle rumination grows so loud that I can't think, can't sleep, can barely _breathe_ with the agony of it, the pain of blossoming ideas I _can't test_ -

I think the most I've gone without sleep was five days. Don't worry, I drank lots of coffee. The crash was unpleasant, the pounding in my head nigh unbearable - but the quiet of total exhaustion? You can't understand how beautiful it is not to have to think for a little while. That, and one can be very productive when working ceaselessly for five days straight. Did you notice I never left? You were working on something too. You just went to sleep in between. Did the ideas stop flowing once you closed your eyes? Or did they sting and claw you until you gave up on rest?

Or did you persist in seeking sleep, only to have them dance, twisted and imperfect, through your head all the same, finally forcing you to wakefulness in a desperate effort to bring them to logical conclusion?

I get caught up in my work sometimes. So sue me. When the brain goes almost faster than the fingers can fly on a keyboard or the controls for a microscope, a scientist has little choice but to divert all attention to the task at hand lest the breakthrough slip away. I don't mind missing meals, anyway - the human body really only needs a fraction of the food most people give it to function.

A scientist's job is to ask 'why?' Once I wondered why it is that everyone but me is so damn sentimental and seems incapable of rational thought. Hypothesis: something to do with a self-evolved laterally superior intellect taking up space usually spent on irrationality? (Emotion?) I didn't allow myself to follow that experiment to the conclusion. Call me an improper empiricist, but some infantile corner of my mind didn't want to know why. (Infantile corner of my mind - must be time for a stupidectomy.)

Hyper-Cortisone D has an interesting effect on my mutation. (Please don't ask how I know - I _mean_, unintelligent gene jockeys wouldn't understand the intricacies of my work.) The ideas come faster and easier, my head is light and clear and - _God_, I could do _anything_ - only the drug is out of supply now. Not to mention illegal. But - science ho and all that. It was an experiment. And the effects were cumulative, since each use enhanced my mutation and further evolved my intellect, not merely my intelligence. Each use never stopped, not really.

Sometimes I just want to be able to enjoy inactivity. But what ratio of vibranium to carbonium alloy is most effective in repelling organic radiation? Why is the atmosphere on Chandilar toxic to cetaceans? How does inter-dimensional warfare affect the skeins of reality here's one hundred and twenty seven ways to improve the oscillotron how could I genetically engineer a sand worm which is stronger organic steel or Apocalypse strand alloy and where does that neurotoxin come from how does the propulsion engine in Skrull FTL emergency capsules work why does everyone hate me no wait I _know_ this -

Do you understand?

Your work is tiny and pathetic. Your mind is too slow and limited to contend with someone like me. I am awesome.

(Hypothesis: ideas don't fill me up. If they did I wouldn't feel so empty.)

Your childish brain is sometimes cringe worthy. But on occasion the electrical intensity an idea takes on when shared between us makes me giddy with enthusiasm, and I get a funny feeling in my chest. A physical manifestation of excitement, a glowing warmth born of the charged promise for the future. Ideas like these can occupy my full attention single-handedly for weeks, sustain this sensation that makes me almost... happy. Like the brief rush of elation that comes with answering a question, the instant of euphoria before the next unknown starts eating away at my mind.

Then at other times, I am nearly overcome with the weight of the empirical _what why how_ stretching in a million conflicting directions.

You often seem more occupied with _should_. How's that working out for you? (I guess that's why you were never a Nazi. But _should_ seems so unimportant in the face of everything else I could discover.)

Battle Axis was a part-time thing. Did you know that? I try not to publicize the fact. I spent some of my time there doing... other things. I'm not proud. But there they were - live test subjects no one would miss, substantial funding towards science, labs with no rules - imagine; _no rules!_ - the possibilities were endless, as were the questions that needed answering. How does the human body react when nitroglycerin is injected directly into the pulmonary artery? How long can a human being survive exposure at -30 degrees Fahrenheit? These were experiments that were not permitted anywhere else, and all I had to do was regularly exalt the third Reich and pretend I agreed that some races were biologically inferior (they're not. I checked, just in case). I couldn't let the chance go to waste. It was wrong, yes, but the things I learned-!

Don't look at me like that. I was a Nazi hunter, too. I have a conscience. Sometimes that's what makes my throat go tight, I think.

I tried morphine. (Don't overreact.) It's like what falling asleep must be for no-power brain flat scans; dark. Blissful. Quiet. _Should_ I use it? Doesn't matter. Sometimes the emptiness in me somehow hurts so bad (can nothingness feel pain?) that I need it just to hold the irrationality (emotion?) at bay. Irrationality (emotion?) is my enemy. Irrationality (emotion?) is pain, and pain clouds the mind.

(Ah, I hear you now - "Emotion doesn't have to be pain, James." But it is. I have tested it. The conclusion: opening your heart to emotion is pain and pain only.) (Revision: the heart is a cardiovascular organ and does not process the electrical impulses that we interpret as 'emotion'.)

I wish I could accept your cute little hypothesis - the 'spectrum of human emotion', the possibility of ups and downs. For me, there are two options: numbness and pain. If I feel, I _hurt_. Everyone's disgust hurts me. Your indifference hurts me. My own biting coldness hurts me. How the _hell_ can my own unfeelingness cause me such _pain_?

Logical conundrum: morphine clouds the mind to avoid pain. Pain must be avoided using morphine because pain clouds the mind.

When exactly did I become so damn irrational?

I avert my eyes from my arm when I inject. I don't want to see how many little holes there are from previous uses. (How many holes are there? How much morphine can my body handle? What if I mix it with 12 Tylenols? 13?)

'Good riddance,' they'll say. 'He was barely even human, the callous, arrogant scumbag.' And they'll be right.

My mother died for me. I killed her twice (I killed her by being born and I killed her by not stopping her from bearing me. I could have saved her and I _didn't_. "Save my son," she said. Would she regret that now?) She wasted her life on garbage.

Moment of clarity. Experiment: introspection. Conclusion: ..._fucking hell_. I am _falling apart_. My mind is breaking and everything _hurts_ so damn much and I want to _sleep_ until I _die_ - real sleep, dreamless, perfectly painless even if it means death. Or especially. My own agony is going to detonate an irreplaceable human treasure. No, not a treasure - a useless, unfeeling, _idiotic_ piece of _shit_.

It's been a pleasure to work with you. At times.

Revision: ignore everything I just said. Everything. And wait at least an hour before coming up to my room.

This is your highest and only priority.


End file.
